SUPERHUMAN: OUR INNER DARKNESS part of the India Dance Festival at the Korzo in The Hague

Society needs its heroes, someone to worship, admire or even, for the ambitious, to aspire to. There is no shortage of them, whether they be actual worshipped deities, fictional superheroes like Batman or Superman, rockstars or legends of the sports field or the silver screen.

We place them high on their pedestals and immediately test their fragility. A pedestal is a precarious place to be and the unwary, complacent or arrogant hero will soon be knocked off, frequently providing a side dish of schadenfreude for the observer. In her programme notes for Superhuman: Our Inner Darkness, Kalpana Raghuraman sites Kevin Spacey as one of the most recent stars to fall in disgrace from the firmament – even before the accusations have been proved and a trial had taken place. Heroes are human and have human traits and faults and it seems to be the revelation and recognition of that fact that leads to their downfall. Their fault is that they are human and they all have an inner darkness. We don’t want our heroes to be like us, we want them to be superhuman, faultless and divine. But, being human, they are bound to fail and therefore need to be replaced.

Kalpana Raghuraman’s new piece provided a fitting, super even, climax to this year’s Korzo India Dance Festival. It was one of the few completely contemporary pieces in the Festival and, had you not known anything about it, you would perhaps have missed the Indian connection. Yes, one was able to detect tabla in Simone Giacomini’s excellent and original, mainly synth and percussion score and yes, there was a lot of foot-stamping but otherwise this could have been any leading multi-racial contemporary dance company in the world.

Ms Raghuraman, who grew up in the Netherlands, labels herself not only as a choreographer but as a cultural anthropologist and is clearly interested in the hero-worship phenomenon. In Superhuman she seeks to explore the search for, and selection of, a new superhero.

The piece starts with the three girl and three boy dancers aggressively and energetically strutting their stuff like a tribal war dance, each striving to assert their dominance.

The most startling and dramatic moment of the performance came at the beginning of the second sequence. From a pitch-black stage a huge v-shaped shaft of light appears, casting the shadow of a lone figure on the back wall. The music becomes vocal and we gradually realise that it is the shadowy figure that is singing. The dancers, meanwhile, are hardly visible, barely detectable forms scattered around the dark stage. The song finishes and the light source, a lamp in a small box on castors, changes. A lid is placed on top and one of the sides removed, casting a horizontal shaft of light across the stage. The box become like a lighthouse as the singer turns it around, slowly picking out one dark figure after another.

And then the story really starts, the search begins. As the light, guided by the singer, hits each dancer they assume an impossible pose, contorting themselves into grotesque, painful shapes which they must hold until the solitary light moves on.

Although inspired by Indian mythological comics, especially the epic Mahabharata, this is a universal theme and to the untrained eye Kalpana Raghuraman’s astounding, often disturbing piece did not come across as particularly Indian. But as we know, human nature with all its strengths and weakness is universal and so are the ideas that Superhuman explores.

The six dancers were excellent and were, I suspect, taken to the limits of their abilities and endurance and for me they were all superheroes. Lotta Sophie Bakker not only sang beautifully as the enigmatic examiner but also wrote the lyrics. Mentions must also go to Asalia Khadjé whose costumes were simple but effective and to Jeffrey Steenbergen whose lighting, although often from a single source, added atmosphere, and often menace, to a very exciting and enjoyable evening. I was very impressed. Michael Hasted 4th November 2018

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1st June marks an important milestone in the struggle against the coronavirus as far as the arts are concerned. Finally, after two months of lockdown, performance spaces, galleries and museums open their doors to the public – with very tight restrictions and controls. For museums, especially the big ones in Amsterdam like the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh, it will mean one is able to look at the pictures in a calm and leisurely fashion

EXTRACURRICULAR

by Parikrama Rai of Victory Art in Rotterdam.
The current pandemic has presented us with many challenges: one of which is to stay connected with the world despite being locked in our quickly shrinking homes. The internet has, however, been a blessing during this dark time. For us art enthusiasts especially, it has given us a connection to the inspiring world of art from a safe distance.

NEWS UPDATE

We will bring you relevant news about the Coronavirus situation in the Netherlands, The Hague area in particular, gleaned from various Dutch sources thanks to Omroep West and DutchBuzz.

Headlines for Wednesday, 3rd June

GGD CORONA TESTING LOCATION OPENS IN NOOTDORP

Public Health Minister, Hugo de Jonge, will officially open an outdoor corona testing centre in Nootdorp today. As of Monday this week, anyone with signs of the coronavirus can apply for the test. If you have signs of the coronavirus, you can make an appointment for the test by phoning 0800-1202.. . . .

The ArtsTalk Podcast

Each week ArtsTalk Magazine editor Michael Hasted presents a podcast focusing on cultural events in and around The Hague, Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

We meet Brazilian dancer and choreographer SAMIR CALIXTO about his work at the Korzo Theatre in The Hague and there is a song from Canadian singer and performance artist RONLEY TEPER. We talk to the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen director SJAREL EX about The Depot, an annexe to the museum which will be opening next year. . . .

BOOKS & LITERARY EVENTS

Paolo Giordano won Italy’s premier literary award at the age of twenty six with his very first novel, The Solitude of Prime Numbers. Written in between the completion of his undergraduate degree and his PhD in Physics, he would go on to complete his doctorate but then devoted himself to writing.